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EJToday: Top Headlines

EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed. Please see Editorial Guidelines for EJToday content.

"If you think of climate change as a hazard for some far-off polar bears years from now, you're mistaken. That's the message from top climate scientists gathering in Japan this week to assess the impact of global warming."

"Forget Glasnost, Mikhail Gorbachev and the arms race. What really broke the Soviet Union was the collapse of oil prices in the late 1980s. The late economist Yegor Gaidar, one of Boris Yeltsin’s prime ministers, wrote in 2007 that the empire’s fall could be traced back to Sept. 13, 1985, when Saudi Arabia, fed up with holding back supply to prop up prices, opened the spigots in a quest to recover lost market share. That day, he argued convincingly, was the beginning of the end."

"Sick and confused sea lions convulsing with seizures are being found in increasing numbers along the California coast, suffering from what Stanford University scientists say is a form of epilepsy similar to the kind that attacks humans."

"TEXAS CITY, Texas -- The cleanup of an unknown amount of thick, sticky oil that spilled into the Galveston Bay blocked the movement Sunday of about 60 ships, including three cruise ships, between the Gulf of Mexico and one of the world's busiest petrochemical transportation waterways."

"The federal Environmental Protection Agency will join North Carolina regulators in addressing potential violations of the Clean Water Act at Duke Energy power plants, including a massive spill of toxic coal ash last month in the Dan River, state officials said on Friday."

"BEULAH, N.D. — Gina McCarthy was deep in enemy territory. Here on this wind-whipped prairie pocked with strip mines, Ms. McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, faced 20 coal miners, union workers and local politicians deeply suspicious of the new climate change regulations she had come to pitch. The Obama administration hopes the regulations will help save the planet, but the North Dakotans say the rules will put coal and their livelihoods at risk."

"On March 24, 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil into the pristine water. At the time, it was the single biggest spill in U.S. history. In a series of stories, NPR is examining the lasting social and economic impacts of the disaster, as well as the policy, regulation and scientific research that came out of it."

"You might expect the biggest lease owner in Canada's oil sands, or tar sands, to be one of the international oil giants, like Exxon Mobil or Royal Dutch Shell. But that isn't the case. The biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the privately-owned cornerstone of the fortune of conservative Koch brothers Charles and David."

"CDC review of seven studies involving over 8,000 children suggests a link between childhood leukemia and exposure to high levels of auto exhaust. Direct cause-effect needs more study, researchers say."